Need help with Daz Renders!

Dare Arkin

So don't hit me, I'm new to Daz3d. I've downloaded the free version from the main site, and am running it on Windows 7. (I think that's all you should need.)

NOW; rendering. If I render a scene on anything from 1-3, it'll show everything (and have very little graphical difference.) WHen I hit 4, the lighting changes drastically and it looks a lot better- but it's almost IMPOSSIBLE for me to figure out what will be lit and what won't. Is there a way to force the quicker renders to show the -actual- lights in the scene?

Here, to show you what I mean. This is one version of the render;

but in the 'final' render (Setting 4) the lighting is completely different, and the starfield (Spacesphere) cannot be seen at all.

JimmyC_2009

We have some excellent render threads on the forums, and I'm sure someone will post the links for you. Option 4 is the 3Delight render engine, while options 1 to 3 are just the OpenGL preview. You will only ever see lights properly when rendered in 3Delight as there are countless thousands of calculations to be done to get it right, and that can only be done at render time.

The Spot Render tool is there to allow you to see a small section of your image, which can often help to see what lights need tweaking. The other main setting that can dramatically reduce render times (and quality though) is the Shading Rate (SR). The default STR for DS4 is 1.0, but you can set that to 4.0 or even 8.o for a much quicker render, but with a loss of quality. It should give a good idea of what the final lighting will look like in the finished image, although reflections will not be as accurate.

3DAGE

Just to add,..
The reason your star-field Background isn't showing up in the High render settings, is the image format (PNG) which supports "Alpha" channel (transparency) and the Scene "Background" is treated as being "Alpha" so it renders out transparent,. which allows you to add any background in an image editor.

Render to (JPG) which doesn't support Alpha channel transparency, to have the Background included in the final image.

Hope it helps :)

Dare Arkin

Thanks for the advice- I'd no idea there even -was- a spot render option. Total newb, hah. But that's not the transparency I mean; What I mean is, see where there's starfield/planet? That's gone in the final render, replaced by completely black windows...

scorpio

What lights are you using